Why are the Feds so Secretive about Chandra Levy's Killer?

Are political sensitivities surrounding illegal immigration keeping the government from stopping violent criminals?

Mark Hemingway

February 16, 2011 2:35 PM

Washington Examiner columnist Barbara Hollingsworth digs up an interesting story today about Ingmar Guandique -- the 29-year-old illegal immigrant convicted of killing congressional staffer Chandra Levy. According to the U.S. Attorney's office, it seems that Guandique came to America after being suspected of attacking a woman on an isolated trail in his home country two years before Levy was killed in a remote part of Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.

The seventh-grade dropout and MS-13 gang member, whom the U.S. attorney rightly considers a "grave danger to the community," was sent to the U.S. by his family because "they were concerned that the victim's family was seeking to retaliate."

We don't find out what happened then because the last 43 pages of Machen's 61-page sentencing memo are redacted. On the same day it was filed, Machen also filed a motion to seal Guandique's file. Why? What exactly does the U.S. attorney not want the public to know about Chandra Levy's killer?

Immigration and Customs Enforcement also refuses to release a copy of the 35-page report prepared at the direction of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano after another illegal immigrant, Carlos Martinelly-Montano, killed a nun and critically injured two others while allegedly driving drunk in Prince William County last August.

Judicial Watch sued ICE after the agency missed several deadlines to release the document under the Freedom of Information Act. On Feb. 11, the watchdog group received a letter from ICE informing them that the draft report "will be withheld in its entirety" in accordance with the law's "deliberative process privilege" that shields the bureaucrats who failed to deport Martinelly-Montano when he was turned over to ICE after two prior DUI convictions.

What's going on here? How can the government justify being so secretive about their failure to stop violent criminals from entering the country illegally?